Hi,
I just got my mother the
Planet Earth series from the BBC.
It is made up like this:
Code:
Disc 1:
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Disc 2:
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6
Disc 3:
Episode 7
Episode 8
Episode 9
Disc 4:
Episode 10
Episode 11
Disc 5:
Bonus Ep 1
Bonus Ep 2
Bonus Ep 3
It makes sense, except for two things:
(1) Each disc not only has its three episodes, but also a “play-all” episode which contains all three episodes in a single title. That’s just wasteful and annoying. What benefit/point is there to watching the three eps as one title instead of three in a row? Wouldn’t it have been better to skip that junk and put three other episodes on the disc instead? That way they could have cut it to three discs with 6/5/3 episodes, thus requiring less disc swapping and be cheaper to manufacture and buy because it’s two discs less. Duh.
(2) Each of the first nine episodes is around 2500MB (2400-2600), but the last two (on disc four) are 3750MB. I understand that because there were only two episodes on that disc instead of three there was more space available, but it really screws things up. I have been putting two eps per disc on DVD5s (~90%), but now I’m stuck. I am trying to put eps nine and 10 on a disc (and 11 and bonus 1 on another), but it won’t work. The stupid 10th and 11th episodes are too big. I figured that they just encoded them at a higher bit rate, but to no significant benefit since the other ones were able to be encoded to ~2240MB and these last two were not visually different, thus not requiring more space. So, I tried setting it to 60% to make it the same size as the normal title (~2240MB each). Unfortunately, when I compare it to the original video, it is noticeably degraded, even with Shrink’s maximum sharpness AEC setting.
I don’t understand. Why is it that they were able to encode nine episodes to 2500MB just fine, and transcoding them down 10% to 2240MB makes little visible change, but the last two that they encoded to 3750MB to use up the available space cannot be transcoded down to 2240MB without really messing it up? It’s not like the last two episodes were of detailed, fractal patterns that needs more space; they are of the same things as the other episodes. Why couldn’t they have been consistent and just encoded them to 2500MB originally? Why can’t those two eps look the same as the other nine at 2240MB?
